Features

Now is a great time to launch a new shape-up program with the Brunswick County Parks and Recreation Department’s 2009 spring fitness schedule.

A variety of classes are slated throughout the county, kicking off this month and continuing in coming weeks. They range from Zumba fitness and Aido Shokai JuJutsu martial arts to cardio and strength training and dance classes.

Have you ever tried to eat 12 grapes in 12 seconds? It is a Cuban New Year’s tradition to eat 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight, signifying the last 12 months of the year.

As New Year’s Day approaches, people around the world will plan for the coming year, eager to get off to the best possible start. Many people will “eat for luck” by planning to eat special foods that, by tradition, are supposed to bring them good luck.

Last year about this time, we looked at some attainable resolutions for gardeners, including enjoying the garden more and obsessing less, using soil and water samples and not trying to grow turfgrasses in the shade. Here are a few suggestions for garden resolutions for 2009:

If having a great looking lawn is high on your priority list, resolve to figure out what should be done and do it in a timely manner. The warm-season grasses we grow are different from cool-season grasses like tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass that are commonly grown in colder climates.

We are already seeing the effects of early cold temperatures. Daffodils are blooming at the Brunswick Botanical Gardens and in my yard as well.

Plants become confused when temperatures fluctuate between warm and cold, especially at this time of year. It is nice to see the color but did you really want the bulbs to bloom this early? If you want to delay the flower set for bulbs, you may have to plant them in cooler spots in the landscape or perhaps plant them a little deeper next time.

Comedian Jon Reep will be the featured headliner in the first “Stand Up For Charity,” a fundraiser sponsored by the Shallotte Junior Women’s Club set for this Saturday, Jan. 3, at Odell Williamson Auditorium at Brunswick Community College.

Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Reep, originally from Hickory, is the 2007 winner of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” and is also known as “the Hemi guy” in the Dodge commercials.

The show will also feature two opening acts—Brad Reeder and Brooklin Green.

For the 12th year, Brunswick Nuclear Plant employees have come together to give back to the community for the holidays through bicycle donations.

Since its inception, the program has provided more than 1,200 children with bicycles and helmets. The annual bike drive gives employees at the nuclear plant the opportunity to make a difference in the life of a child through donating money and time, and this year’s participation rate has been record-breaking.

Small surprise, then, that the affable, retired FDNY lieutenant has been playing Santa Claus for the past quarter-century.

This Christmas, the retired Carolina Shores resident and his wife, Carol, planned to hitch up their sleigh and journey to their native New York, where Woods was to visit with children at firehouses where the couple’s two sons now serve.

Every year about this time, I grow a bit weary of all of the holiday stuff and the typical cool and wet weather of our winters. The only solution to this is to get out and get a little bit of dirt under the fingernails. Of course, purists will recoil at the mention of dirt.

Yes, I know, the stuff we grow plants in is soil, but even though I’m quickly closing in on the big Five-O, I’m still that kid pushing those Buddy-L and Tonka bulldozers and dump trucks around the sand pile.

Camellias bloom late fall, winter and early spring when few other plants do and have beguiled southern landscapes for more than 100 years. Camellias are usually thought of as a southern plant; they have been adapted to extend as far north as Long Island, N.Y. They can generally withstand winter temperatures as low as 10 degrees; they can be grown anywhere if you protect them and keep the roots from freezing. Camellias are shallow rooted, like the shade, and do the best in loose, fertile soil that is slightly acid. They do not like poor drainage.

Are you naughty or nice to your plants? The old adage applies here, “Too much of a good thing can kill you.”

People who have purchased Christmas trees which can be used as landscape trees after Christmas must make sure they are properly cared for while in the home during the holidays. Too much or too little water plus exposure to indoor heat are common problems associated with Christmas tree short life. Try having the decorated tree only in the house for a minimum time and plant as soon after Christmas as possible.

Christmas arrives in a flurry of anticipation and dashed expectations. Weeks of hype, whispered hopes and circled desires swiftly end in a heap of torn paper and crushed bows.

Gifts hoped for were not received. Unexpected presents did not always match desires.

Children, overwhelmed by the abundance of toys, cannot express their gratitude in the face of such bounty. Despite our best efforts to ignore the feeling, I think we all sense the death found in birth, the cross that shadows Christmas.

Most builders can be seen with ladders and other tools of the trade in the beds of their pickup trucks, but members of the Brunswick County Home Builders Association recently loaded a truck with food bound for local food pantries.

“When our association decided on a food drive as a community outreach project, our goal was to collect enough food to fill the back of a pickup truck, and we did,” said Tim Gallimore, president of the Brunswick County Home Builders Association.

Who invented meatloaf, why and when? Food historians tell us from ancient times to the present cooks have been mixing ground meat with minced bread/rice/vegetables, spices, thickeners and serving them with sauce. But for what reasons?

My best guesses are 1) to distribute meat to more people (protein economy); 2) to conserve resources (use it up, don’t throw it out); and 3) to make tough meat more palatable (aid digestion).

Isn’t it amazing how we can be wishing to turn 16 and get a driver’s license and then wake up a short time later and 30 years have disappeared? Something about this time of year always kicks the nostalgia into high gear, so bear with me as we look back on Christmases past.

The first 10 years of my life were spent in a white, wood-framed house that was completed in 1912. It had the typical high ceilings, no insulation and was oriented just right to catch a summer breeze.